It's been 65 years since Roy Weaver was taken prisoner and
thrown into a Japanese-run POW camp in Shenyang, but the former US
Marine can still vividly recall the suffering, hunger and fear of
those three long years of his life.
"The worst part, I think, was never knowing when you were going
to get out," Weaver, 88, said yesterday of the former Mukden POW
camp, in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province.
Roy Weaver (left), 88, and
Robert A. Brown, 82, former WWII prisoners held in a Japanese POW
camp in Shenyang, outside their Beijing hotel yesterday.
He is among nine former American prisoners of war and 47 spouses
or family members of deceased soldiers and sponsors currently on a
short visit to China that includes a five-day trip to the former
campsite.
It is the first time such a large POW delegation has ever
visited the site. Washington DC-based Truth Council for World War
II in Asia organized the trip.
Today the site is a museum under construction, dedicated to the
memory of those who were incarcerated there, and will officially
open in September at a cost of 54 million yuan (US$7 million),
funded by the Shenyang, Liaoning and central governments.
The remains of the World War II prison camp, located in
Northeast China, was where more than 2,000 allied forces, most of
them American, were imprisoned between November 1942 and August
1945 by the Japanese. The site was left to deteriorate until a few
years ago.
Tortured by vicious beatings, "bacteria experiments", hunger and
other harsh treatment, hundreds of prisoners died there during
those years. Some historians considered the camp one of the
Japanese forces' most brutal.
Before they checked into Beijing's Grand View Garden Hotel in
Xuanwu District yesterday, Weaver managed to keep his emotions in
check when asked about his first trip back to the campsite since
the war. He recalled how those days between 1942 and 1945 were
filled with death, sickness, random beatings and hunger.
During the first bitterly cold winter, many men died and
couldn't be buried because the ground was frozen, he recalled. In
the spring more than 200 bodies were awaiting burial.
"The ground was frozen solid. We couldn't dig graves so we
couldn't bury anybody," Weaver, of Idaho, said.
Robert A. Brown (third from
left) at the Japanese camp.
"So we put the bodies in a warehouse -- they were frozen -- and
we stacked them like wood. And then in the spring time, when we
could bury them, we brought them all out at the same time and
buried them."
Like many others servicemen, Weaver was captured in the
Philippines and brought to Shenyang through Korea and Manchuria.
And if they didn't die during the trip or fall sick from beriberi,
also known as malnutrition, they were forced to work in the camp
making tools or treating sick soldiers.
Another former prisoner, Robert A. Brown, 82, of California,
brought with him on this trip his scrapbook filled with newspaper
clippings and fading black and white photographs of him, a few
other soldiers in the camp, and one Japanese captain called the
"Bull."
The captain, both Brown and Weaver recalled, used his sword to
command obedience from prisoners who did not follow his orders -
willingly or innocently. Keeping the blade sheathed, Bull would use
the sword as a beating stick.
"If you did something wrong you would get beat up," said Brown,
who served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
"When we were in formation, if someone at the end of the line
did something, he would charge at you and unbuckle his sword while
walking. When he got down there the guys would melt like butter. He
was big, mean and ugly."
Weaver took a few of Bull's blows and now suffers from severe
arthritis in one shoulder and even had to undergo surgery to fix
the damage of one of Bull's violent rampages.
For other visitors, like Janiece Cohen, the trip to the museum
site was a chance to learn about a horrible period in the life of a
loved one.
Cohen, a Continental Airlines flight attendant from Los Angeles,
joined the trip to learn about her father's experience - something
she couldn't get the former Marine to share with her before he died
a few years ago.
"I realized there were so many questions that I had," she said
about his detention. "My father was very closed up
emotionally."
One thing he shared with her involved the "medical experiments"
of which details remain a mystery even today, as both the Japanese
and American governments have been tightlipped about the
claims.
Her father, Ray Cohen, spoke about Japanese doctors arriving at
the camp in white suits and injecting him and other prisoners who
later became ill, she said.
She has no doubts the Japanese conducted the experiments, she
theorized was possible malaria drug testing.
"He was injected with something and it made him sick," she
said.
"He didn't know what it was. And in the camp, doctors would come
in with their white robes and watch. So I know it's true."
Many group members on this trip, including Cohen, brought old
uniforms, postcards and artifacts, which they donated to the new
museum. They are also helping museum researchers piece together
vital information about the prison camp.
The site was first considered as a potential museum more than
four years ago following a visit by former American prisoners who
lobbied officials to preserve the Shenyang site.
Since then, the city government of Shenyang and the provincial
government of Liaoning have spearheaded efforts to preserve the
original buildings. Plus, the central government has also earmarked
additional funds for its renovation.
The renovated site will include all the remaining site buildings
- a two-storey brick building, three bungalows and a water
tower.
There will be an outdoor square with two walls inscribed with
the names of POWs held there.
The Mukden camp site is widely regarded as compelling evidence
of Japan's atrocities at the time. In Nanjing (formerly Nanking),
another war museum is dedicated to the 1937 massacre that took
300,000 Chinese lives in the capital of East China's Jiangsu
Province.
Many Chinese believe Japan has not adequately apologized for its
crimes in the war, to this day some Japanese conservatives still
deny.
Despite his tender age, Weaver said he wanted to visit China to
ensure the camp's history did not fade into history.
"Don't ever forget what happened in the POW camps," Weaver
said.
"People should remember this, so that way, we don't do it over
again."
(China Daily May 25, 2007)
